Meditative Business Planning

One of the best ways to tune into ourselves is through meditation. Meditation helps us to get still and get quiet and ultimately to hear ourselves. Meditation reconnects us to our hearts and to our souls. While I’m certainly no meditating expert (I wouldn’t even call myself a meditating amateur), I think of practicing meditation as removing layers upon layers of worries and negative thoughts to get to the core of ourselves.

This is a great place from which to create. It’s a great place from which to brainstorm and take action.

In her wonderful workbook The Conquer Kit: A Creative Business Planner for Women Entrepreneurs media producer and author Natalie MacNeil shares two meditations that she uses to create and to make decisions about her business. MacNeil is the founder of the website SheTakesOnTheWorld.com. I think we can use MacNeil’s meditations to shape our lives, and even more so our days, whether we’re entrepreneurs or not. Below, you’ll find both meditations and insights from MacNeil’s book.

Soul-Stirring Future Success Meditation

MacNeil suggests thinking of this meditation as daydreaming. Again, whether you have your own business or not, you can use this meditation to lay out what you’d like your life to look like. Which is exciting.

First sit or lie down. Close your eyes, and keep your palms up. Take several deep breaths. Let your body relax. Next, imagine that it’s 12 months from today. Ask yourself this question: “What do I really want and where do I want to be?” “Visualize where you’re living, what you’re working on in your business, what you’re really proud of, who your biggest supporters are.”

When you’re done with your meditation, MacNeil suggests writing down anything and everything that came to you about where you’d like to be in one year.

Board of Advisers Meditation

According to MacNeil, when you’re an entrepreneur, you need to make many, many decisions. You also need to know when it’s time to go into warrior mode and when it’s time to pull back and nurture yourself. I think this is relevant for dealing with any kind of challenge. In any area of your life.

She notes that this meditation is “a simple, loving way to examine all sides of a situation and step into a different mental space.”

To start visualize yourself sitting in a boardroom with all the people who inspire you. Really inspire you. These individuals might be everyone from family to fictional characters. MacNeil’s boardroom includes Daenerys Targaryen from Game of Thrones and Amelia Earhart.

Then MacNeil suggests doing the following during your meditation: “Focus on the person who would be best suited to advise your current situation and hone in on her energy. Focus on the qualities she has that you need to develop. Visualize a ball of light transferring from her heart to yours, and all those qualities you admire in that person are now within you too. Imagine yourself embodying her power and her gifts.”

After the meditation, try to embody that person’s energy as you navigate your challenge. Basically, you’re training yourself to embody that kind of mindset. And as MacNeil writes, “the gifts, qualities, and light you value in another person are a reflection of you.”

MacNeil also suggests finding photos of your board members and pasting them into The Conquer Kit workbook. (You can always paste them into your journal or planner or even onto a wall in your office.)

What I love about MacNeil’s book is the reminder that we can plan and make decisions in different ways. We can use meditation—and visualization, sketching, scribbling and even playing pretend—to make our dreams come true. To shape our days into whatever we’d like. In other words, we can get creative.